tweener
by paper piper
Summary: his hair was just so red. it felt like singing. -claire/chane


A/N: something a little random. i love this couple to bits XD and this fandom needs more love, dammit!

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**'tweener**

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Chane grew up in black and white. Huey was all about the "reality of the thing," a real pragmatic cynical, an observer, a silent silver fox. _Chane_, he said, _colors and sound only pollute the creation. Strip away the loudness of the world, and then you have the fact of the matter_. And her handsome, youthful father smiled his half-smile below those golden-sun eyes.

(_But what good is a smile,_ he used to say, _when there is nothing to smile about?_)

(She always wanted to ask, _But, Father, what about your eyes?_ She could not imagine his eyes without their luster.)

He dressed her in the finest silks, the most elegant laces, ribbons, pearls. She was a creature born and bred of black and white. A little gothic Lolita.

She was not comfortable with color, with aggressive people, with noise. Her world was small and silent and stark—_simple_, her father said. Without the colors, there is no gradation, no grey area. No confusion.

_Life is as it should be_. And she was content with that. She lived for Huey, and she was fine.

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He was a thing splattered in _red_.

Loud, and so fast his body was a dark bloody blur.

And he _laughed_.

At what? Chane was already confused.

(Look at him! Look at the way he prances forward to challenge Ladd Russo for no reason at all, to speak so seriously and so confidently, smiling all the while just because he wanted to!)

_This is my world_, he said, and it was the strangest thing she'd ever heard. Her father had spoken of "the world" as an alien thing, as something outside of him and which he did not fully understand—something he shook his head at and watched itself burn.

And now this guy. All this is in his head? No, surely not. Of course there is a definite truth. Of course there are things that are real, concrete, dependable, and there are things that are unreal, fake, fantasy. But he was saying oh so convincingly, _This is my world and I am its master and I will do what I please in what is my world_—she could not help but be persuaded a little bit.

Could she have a world of her own, too? Could there exist a little pocket of the universe where she could grow her questions and her musings, and not merely be satisfied with what they tell her is true?

He was so cocky and stern and satisfied. He threw the blondes in white off the train without batting an eyelash.

(_Could it be—?_ She wondered. But did not speak, did not move.)

_The Rail Tracer_, the passengers screamed.

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_I love you_, he said. Standing less than a foot from her, within touching distance, and covered head to toe in other people's blood.

(She wondered vaguely what he looked like underneath all that—could he be more handsome than her father?)

_I want to marry you_, he went on, and he did not sound bashful at all, or unsure. He was staring straight at her, not blinking, not flinching. He meant it, and she felt the thrill down to her bones.

And with the thrill—the confusion, the expectation, the fear.

The answer was not in black or white—her world went red.

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She stumbled backwards, and into the arms of complete strangers who took her in and gave her a place to stay. Though Jacuzzi's gang whispered and asked questions and shrugged, they never tossed her out, never. How could they do it? She did not know. Not knowing was too uncomfortable. Where was Huey? What would he want her to do in this situation? She could not guess.

So she sat by the window, listened to Nice talk quietly and gently to her, wrote her answers on paper in the crude handwriting of a child. (Not like father's elegant script, it made her cringe to see.)

And when his package came for her, she felt her feet landing on solid ground again.

A white dress. A dress fit for a princess, or a bride.

And she wondered again what this man looked like, this man who seemed to know so well—even though they were complete opposites, he with his loud assurance and she with her quiet confusion. Yet, even then, the lines between them blurred—because, and she could not deny this—there was a special something that they shared. Something beyond words, buried so deeply into the soul that they cannot identify its name.

More grey area.

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When he found her again, she was wearing the dress he'd given her, and she was in the midst of battle. It seemed only fitting that they should be reunited in the midst of battle when they had met in the midst of battle.

And, of course, as before, he stepped in front of her. Calm, assured, and smirking.

But this time he did not come to her as the stuff of children's nightmares, as the dark figure on a train who dragged his victims screaming into the night. He was a man. Tall, tan, lean as a tiger, strong as a lion. Wearing drab expensive clothes and a crop of tousled red hair.

Oh, god, that hair: she couldn't keep her eyes off of it. As loud as he was, and unruly, and just so damned red. Red and wild in every way that Chane was pale and petite. Though this man had a kind face, his hair was his giveaway: he was lethal, and uncontrollable, and just a little bit mad. Not the reserved, cultivated, frowning creature that he father was.

And when he moved, to dodge, to strike, to leap, his hair was a blur of light against the gloom.

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Claire laughed. _Let's try being friends_, he said. _And then maybe we can get married._

(Her mouth went a little dry at that, because, god, to be married to this man—! To have a man to gather you into his arms and to touch and to kiss you and to make you feel like a woman instead of a little girl—)

(The thrills, the thrills, the chills up her spine like danger but not quite as cold, and more delicious)

And it was not a "no," and it did not demand a "yes" either. It was a _between_. A grey area, but it was not dead the way grey was dead: it was bursting with possibilities, with afternoons of walks, with quiet conversations, with gentle touches. A whole new world thriving in color.

She opened her mouth to speak, and then she remembered she could not.

_Don't worry_, he told her. _We'll take it slow._

(And it felt like singing her heart out—loud and clear and strong, the way she had been too afraid to do. But perhaps that's what this was all about, not having to be afraid, ever again. )

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_fin._

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A/N: tell me 'bout its ;) **review plz**


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